


Lay a Ghost

by significantowl



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Jessica Jones (cameo), Post-Defenders, Stick (cameo), Team Up, mysterious happenings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: At the Hotel Victoria, the rooms are well-appointed, the chambermaid service is quick and discreet, and the restaurant has two Michelin stars.But there's something strange going on within its walls, and Matt and Elektra may find themselves facing more than they bargained for.“You think they’ll come for us.” Matt frowns. “You haven't seen or heard anything in this room before, have you? But you think tonight will be different?”“I do.” Elektra’s finger taps against his chest once, twice, three times. “Tonight I have something to lose.”





	Lay a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I began this last October for an autumn prompt meme at tumblr; the prompt was "your otp vs. a haunted house". There are scenes here I never posted on tumblr, and I would like to add more to it - let's see if I can do it before DD s3 airs! *fingers crossed*
> 
> So many thanks to Capriccio and Elliceluella all for their help along the way! <33

 

When Matt passes through the hotel's heavy wooden doors, held open by a doorman wearing a wool uniform laden with starch and shoes that reek of polish, it's as if he's walked into a cocoon: all sound from the outside world is dampened, and the everyday hum of the building itself fades out to the very edge of his perception. The buzz of electricity passing through wires, the gurgling of water in pipes, the rush of air through heating ducts, the clanking of steel as elevators rise and fall - it's like it all has been wrapped in cotton wool.

Matt shakes his head slightly, swallowing down a spurt of panic. It's irrational. There's nothing wrong with him. He can hear the desk clerk's heart thump soundly in her chest; he can hear her breath in her lungs. She doesn't know it yet, but mucus is building. Tomorrow morning she's going to wake up with a cold.

"Hi," he says, shooting her a smile. "I went out, and I - well, I seem to have forgotten my room number. Does it say it on the card here?" He fumbles the keycard as he holds it out, and she hastily reaches out to catch it before it drops.

"Oh, no, the cards don't - I mean, let me scan it for you, sir, I'll have that number for you in just one moment." There's a beep. It's strangely muted, too, and Matt doesn't like it at all. Oh, he's no stranger to the idea that money can warp reality however it chooses, and obscene amounts have doubtlessly been pumped into every aspect of this hotel, but with computers and their kin so aggressively present in the twenty-first century, it's like hearing life itself being suffocated.

By the time the elevator whispers its arrival, his skin is crawling. He taps the corners of the doors with his cane before passing through. 

Early that morning - well, before ten - Matt had been heading out to interview a potential client when he'd found the card lying on the floor just inside his apartment door. A smooth, slim plastic rectangle, the size and shape of a credit card but without any raised numbers; he'd been fairly certain it was a keycard of some type, and a quick stop at Jessica Jones' office had confirmed it.

“Hotel Victoria," she'd said. "You know the one. Fifth Avenue. Swank as shit."

He did know. It was that kind of place. He thanked her for her help and stood, controlling a wince as he turned towards the door. Skyscrapers were hell on the back.

"Murdock." An odd tone in her voice froze him in place. "Why'd you bring this to me? Why not Nelson? Or Claire, or Luke?” When he doesn’t answer right away, she presses, “What, did you rank us all in your head, and decide I was the one least likely to give a shit about whatever it is you're planning to do to yourself?"

Hurt. The tone was hurt. "It's just a hotel key," Matt said.

"Right, yeah. So you won't mind if I just drop it in an envelope for you and send it back there? Save you a stamp? Yeah, that's what I thought," she added, because instinct had him snatching it out of her hand before she'd even finished speaking. 

He worked his jaw, picking and choosing his words. "Jessica... I could've shown it to anyone. My next door neighbor, or that guy on the corner who always tries to sell me newspapers I can't read. Maybe - maybe if one person was going to know where I'd gone, I wanted it to be you."

"Yeah. Well. You smooth-talk for a living, but whatever." She walked him to the door, her boots grounded and solid on her bare wooden floor. "Don't make me come rescue your ass, because I can guarantee those snots up there won't like it one bit."

She hadn't asked for status updates, but Matt sends her one by voice text from the elevator anyway. "Penthouse suite. Don't rescue me yet."

::

The elevator doors open onto a small, square room. Hardwood floors so strongly polished that he can taste the lemon wax on his tongue, a plush rug, and an accent table holding a bouquet of fresh flowers: a foyer. Matt crosses it, finds the magnetic lock with his fingers, and slides the card home to the tune of a barely-perceptible beep.

The door closes behind him, solid and thick. It’s like walking into a tomb. 

Almost.

Across the room, the soft in-out of her breath is as uniquely hers as her heartbeat ever was, and the melody rings in his ears, familiar, beloved. He says, "Hello, Elektra."

"Matthew." She fills the world - every silent space in this strange building, and every cold space in his heart. "What do you know about ghosts?"

Matt shrugs, nonplussed. “I know how people react when they think you are one.” 

Foggy, God, Foggy. He hadn’t actually believed that Matt was a ghost, but he hadn’t believed his eyes, either. He’d been convinced he was having some kind of mental breakdown, ranted about overwork and overstress ( _Dead best friend stress on top of first year with a new firm stress! Tell me that’s fair, Matt! Tell me!_ ), and nothing Matt could say would calm him down. It took a tight, tight hug, and grabbing Foggy’s wrist and pressing the flat of his palm to Matt’s chest. It took them both crying.

Elektra hums lightly. “Insight,” she says. “Just what we need.” She’s sitting on a small sofa in front of a window, and she crosses one leg over the other. “You never thought _I_ was a ghost.”

“Yeah, you know. You hit hard enough to put me through a window. Kinda gave yourself away.”

“Ah, but you always give as good as you get.” There's a chain around her neck, hanging low between her breasts. It's certainly not a crucifix like the one beneath his shirt, but he can't imagine what it actually is. Only that it must not be beautiful, if it's not for the world's eyes. 

It’s probably laughably obvious just how closely he's sensing her. She knows all his tells. Elektra says, “Come sit with me, Matthew. You’re looking well. Three weeks out of bed, is that right? Are you feeling well?”

“If you wanted to know if the doctors had cleared me for sex, you could've just called,” Matt says drily. He feels like a heat-seeking missile, though, crossing the room in a flash, her warmth his guide. He’s barely mapped the room yet - slack of him - but to be fair, it’s the first time he’s been in her presence in a long, long while without being at least half-sedated. 

And he’s not even sure how easy this room would be to map. Outside the window, a passing siren sounds as if it’s a mile away; Matt has his doubts that’s the case, but he buries them in Elektra's lips, bending to kiss her before sliding onto the sofa at her side, then kissing her again. Softly, because he remembers litanies of soft kisses, stolen in the dead of night while his body was bound in bandages and the convent was dead asleep. Thoroughly, because thorough is how a welcome should be.

He strokes her hair as he draws back, curving his palm to her skull. She taps a fingertip against his chest. “What else do you know about ghosts?”

It's clear she's completely serious. Matt matches her. “I know I believe in the existence of a soul that's separate from the body. I know - I know your body was dead, and they brought it back. But they couldn't bury your soul. They tried to, but they couldn't.”

“Oh, Matthew.” Elektra kisses his forehead gently. “This isn't about me,” she says, and Matt lifts his eyebrows. “This is about someone being nasty to innocent people. And you don't care for that sort of thing, do you?”

::

Elektra had been in need of a new place to lay her head in New York, and for the past several weeks, the Victoria has been treating her well in many ways. The restaurant has only two Michelin stars (Matt silences a snort), but the food is fresh and creative; her suite is just four rooms, but they’re well-appointed, and the chambermaid service is quick and discreet.

And, it seems, the walls are crawling with ghosts.

“They cry,” Elektra says. “Not the ghosts; the people. They moan and plead and beg. They're very noisy.” Matt hears an echo of Stick in the disdain in her voice; hears it even more clearly when she adds, “It must have worked for them when they were children.”

“You can hear all this from your suite?”

How, when Matt’s struggling to count the birds on the roof?

But then, Matt’s distracted. He dares anyone to blame him. He can’t stop touching Elektra - simply cannot lift his hand - and his focus is drawn again and again to each point of contact between his skin and hers. He’s whole, and she’s whole, and she’s _here_.

His hand is curled around the nape of her neck, and when she shakes her head, hair streams over his fingers. “I hear it from the corridors. At night.”

The thought of Elektra silently walking darkened hallways, listening for trouble, makes his throat go tight.

“You’re saying these people think they're talking to ghosts?”

“They certainly seem to be under that impression.” 

Quietly, he asks, “And what do _you_ think?”

(The walls, she said the _walls_. These strange, silent walls - )

“I think frightened people run. They leave in a hurry, in the middle of the night, and they don’t always remember to take their valuables with them.”

“So, you’re suggesting some kind of - Halloween robbery scam? That sounds…” Ridiculous. Dramatic. Like an episode of _Scooby Doo._ “...Needlessly complicated.”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Last night, a man on the fourteenth floor cinched a plastic bag over his head because of something his mother said to him. He’s alive because I tore it off his face.”

Matt sighs. “And if I were to ask when his mother died...?”

“1998.”

What comes out next is a response built purely on reflex. “My Heart Will Go On,” he says. 

“ _What?_ ” 

She’s laughing at him; Matt loves it, can't remember the last time he heard it. Elektra's laughing at him, and she saved a man, and Stick was wrong, he was wrong, he was _wrong_. “It’s - blame Foggy, if anybody names a year he comes out with a song. For him 1998 was all about _Titanic_.”

“Of course it was.” Elektra rubs his cheek with her thumb. The callous just beneath the joint feels new and old at the same time. “What do you say, Matthew? Shall we catch a ghost?”

::

It comes as no surprise that Elektra has a plan; Matt would have expected nothing less. The details do surprise him a little, though. Ghost hunting begins with room service: a delicious, intimate dinner for two shared in Elektra's suite.

“I didn't know ghosts could be lured with fish,” Matt says, between bites of Arctic char. With this fish, though, he can almost believe it. Moist, flaky, shockingly fresh, and seasoned by someone who understands the value of restraint, it’s ruining him for all other seafood, forkful by forkful. It's so good that he's not sure he cares.

“Well, we need to keep your strength up, don’t we?” Elektra says. For a moment, Matt’s transported straight back in time, to a marathon sex weekend in college: Her patting him on the cheek and placing orders for Thai food at 4am. Him getting hopelessly tangled in her jeans instead of his own when it came time to answer the door.

He smiles, and slides his leg next to hers under the table. She’s wonderfully warm.

She’s warm later on, too, when dinner’s over and they’ve moved to the chaise lounge in front of the gas fireplace. Did he notice the fireplace earlier, before she switched it on? Matt certainly should have - the sharpness of propane is a beacon to his senses, and not something any amount of clever hotel design or construction could hide from him entirely.

Jazz plays softly from surround sound speakers, and Elektra nestles her head on his chest, ear to his heart. Matt lets his fingers glide through the fall of her hair, over and over, careful not to break a single delicate strand. “So we’re waiting,” he says finally, quietly, a whisper meant only for her. 

“You sound surprised.”

He laughs. “Your plans usually involve a little more… action. Violence. Mayhem. That sort of thing. That’s all.”

“Mm.” She breathes in his arms, and for a moment Matt forgets to care about the abnormality of the world around him. She breathes, and after so many months without that sound, the world is perfect.

Elektra nestles a little closer, and Matt presses his nose to the crown of her head, drinking her in. “Have you ever wanted,” she says slowly, “to simply relive a dream?” 

Every day. All the time. Matt shifts, touching his lips to her hair, and knows she’ll understand.

And for a while, it feels as if they are. As if Matt is in that dream with Elektra, and it's a good one, where they have all the time in the world, and all the cares of another, easier time. Matt doesn't fall asleep, but he feels heavy, anchored; Elektra dozes for a time, her breath going soft and feather-light.

A ticking clock breaks the spell. It's up on the mantelpiece, an old-fashioned one with a pendulum that swings side to side. The tick-tock is a minor detail, a small thing, one tiny element in the tapestry surrounding him. Matt notices it for the first time during a slight lull in the music, and clenches his jaw, annoyed it stayed hidden from him so long. 

“Elektra,” he says. “Elektra.” He touches his thumb to her chin, and waits until he feels her respond, her head lifting in acknowledgement. “If we're going out looking for assholes later, you should know, I don’t have my suit. Don't have one at all, I mean. I… haven't done anything about a new one, and my old one, it. It didn’t exactly make it.”

The song reaches a bridge. As the lead sax drops out, a cello picks up the tune, taking it low. Matt feels its weight, note by note; feels an echo of it in the heat of Elektra's forefinger, sketching a circle high on his chest. “Yes,” she says. “I know.”

The clock ticks. If it's not dark outside already, it will be soon. Elektra rises up on one elbow - watching Matt's face? Or watching the room? “I don't think we need to leave,” she says. “I think we're precisely where we need to be.”

“You think they’ll come to us.” Matt frowns. “You haven't seen or heard anything in this room before, have you? But you think tonight will be different?”

“I do.” Elektra’s finger taps once, twice, three times. “Tonight I have something to lose.”

::

“Well, isn’t this just cozy as shit.”

The voice is exactly the same. And the shape of him, too - wiry and gnarled, like a graveyard tree bent low over a row of stones. His smell is the one that burned itself into Matt’s memory in the moment Elektra stabbed him: he reeks of iron, of fresh-flowing blood.

But there are certainly differences.

No heartbeat.

No breath.

Matt and Elektra are already on their feet. She's holding a sai in either hand, snatched up from beneath the lounge. Matt's hands are in fists, but still lowered at his sides. For now.

“What are you?” Elektra says, low and dangerously intent. 

A laugh rings out. It sounds like Stick’s in every way, a particular blend of age, assholishness, and arrogance that Matt never thought he would hear again. “Elektra. Charming as always. Forgotten my face already? What about the hole you put in me?” He - whatever he is - presses his hand to the wound. The scent of iron intensifies, and when he lifts his hand, Matt can hear liquid crawling down his palm. “Have to say, I've had a hard time forgetting that.”

But how, _how_ can the voice sound so exactly like Stick’s without being powered by his lungs? Without air passing through his vocal folds, setting to vibrate at his precise pitch? Matt's listening so intently that he's holding his own breath. But there's nothing to hear: no air going in. No air going out. 

He wonders how the figure before them looks to Elektra’s eyes. Is it as fleshed-out and solid as the flow of air in the room suggests? Or are they facing something from a ghost story, hazy, pale, and indistinct? 

“What _are_ you,” Elektra repeats, louder this time, and takes a step forward, close enough to put their visitor in reach of her blades.

“Matty here will tell you not to believe a word I say. Seems like I could just save him the trouble, keep my mouth shut. That work for you, Matty?”

“Answer her question,” Matt snaps. For a moment, his flare of anger makes it hard to even doubt that they’re talking to Stick; it’s so old and so familiar, it’s a passport to another time. 

Three months ago. A year ago. Two decades ago. It all burned like this.

Stick - no, don’t think of it as Stick - gestures toward Elektra with the stump of his hand. “One thing’s for sure, I’m sure as shit not alive. So you can lower those weapons of yours, Ellie. Unless you think you can kill me twice.”

“You’re dead, and you’re slipping,” Matt says softly. “Telling us to drop our defenses. Doesn’t sound like the guy I know.”

Knew. The guy he knew.

“I’m _dead_ because you let her kill me. _She’s_ a walking nightmare because you made a bad play, jumped into something you shouldn’t have, and let Nobu kill her. Not doing so hot at keeping people alive, are you, Matty? I’m not surprised. And you know what? Neither is she.”

“Soft as those sheets I lie on,” Matt says. “Yeah. I know.” 

This thing - it talks people into running, and it talks them into harming themselves. Conversation is its weapon; it _wants_ to talk, and it wants its words to hurt. Something else it has in common with Matt’s memories of Stick. 

Maybe that’s why it’s working. 

“Stick should’ve died happy. He got what he wanted.” Elektra pushes in closer, an aggressive move, but also a protective one, Matt thinks, designed to keep him squarely behind her. 

A chill creeps through Matt's veins. She's so certain, _too_ certain, that the thing has come for Matt, and it has nothing to do with how strong or how weak she considers either of them to be.

She thinks she isn't human enough to be its prey.

Elektra's wrong. Without question, without doubt, Matt knows it down in his soul. But the thing has nurtured that belief in Elektra, night after night after night; fed and tended it, every time it attacked someone else, and left her standing alone.

“What I wanted? A sword through the gut?” The thing’s laugh is ugly, and wholly Stick’s. “Overrated. You should know that.”

“No. A fighter who wouldn't flinch.” In an instant, Elektra pins it against her body, its back to her chest, her sai crossed at its throat. “One final opportunity to answer. You're not Stick. What are you?”

“Why are you so sure?” A snort. “Because I never touched your substance? There's more to heaven and earth than what the Hand knows, girl. Matty will tell you the same.”

Matt smiles with his teeth. “See, now, the _real_ Stick learned that trying to use us against each other never, ever turns out the way you’d hope.”

“All that time I spent on the other side, in the cold, in the dark, in the -” a fine shudder ripples through Elektra’s body. She didn't hear Matt. She's somewhere else right now, somewhere Matt's never been. “All that time, and you want me to believe there was some way out I couldn’t find? You -”

It's the heart of the matter, for Elektra. It's the bleeding wound. And just like Stick, this thing will never give her an answer. Not when it can make her feel small and ignorant and powerless instead.

Elektra's fingers tighten, her muscles tense, and when Stick’s voice says, “Truth hurts, sweetheart,” Matt leaps into action before she can, driving his fist into the solid curve of Stick’s skull. 

That should probably give Matt pause - just how solid it is - but it doesn't. He hits Stick’s body again and again, and it’s like a dream; Matt hits, and Stick is silent. Matt hits, and Stick falls, and he stays down.

::

When they step out onto the roof, it’s a shock to the senses, albeit a welcome one. The city hits Matt with a wall of sound, and for a very brief instant he’s a confused, overwhelmed child all over again. The one that Stick, for all his faults, had managed to save.

There's a terrace on the rooftop for hotel guests, littered - artistically, Matt's sure - with sofas, low stools, and long, plush benches. They choose a sofa, and settle down together side by side; Elektra makes a disgusted noise when it turns out to be damp. “We should've brought a cushion from the room.”

“It would've been ruined,” Matt points out.

“So?”

Laughing, Matt pulls her into his lap, ignoring the twinge his back gives in protest. The smell of wet asphalt is heavy in the air; within the walls of the penthouse, Matt had missed every tell-tale sign of the night’s rainfall entirely. He buries his nose in Elektra’s hair, reveling in the way her scent mingles with that of the city. The hotel was a mausoleum. They’ve re-joined the world of the living.

“Dawn’s coming,” Elektra says.

Disgust still shades her voice, so Matt says, “What, is it not pretty enough for you?”

“Oh, no, it's rather nice. There’s a bright streak of orange across the sky. It'll be a sunny day.” Elektra pauses, and her breath sings to Matt in the space between her words; he’ll never be able to get enough of that tune. It’s backed now by the light chatter of birds, the dark rumble of garbage trucks, and all the rest of the early-morning symphony of the city. “We solved nothing,” she says. “The body may be gone, but it’ll be back tomorrow night. In one form or another.” 

She’s right, of course. What does it take to craft a ghost? To generate an illusion so close to truth? The thing pretending to be Stick had faded from Matt’s awareness after it hit the ground, as if its life were slowly leaking away. Matt’s thoughts keep circling back to some of the things he read in Jessica Jones’ file. To people with power over the minds of others. 

Seems like that would do the trick.

He says, “We survived tonight. And that… Elektra, if you'd tried to slice that thing’s head off, you’d’ve lost your own. Literally.”

“You're certain of that?”

“Yes.” He is. Matt doesn’t have to fully understand what the thing is to know what it does: convince people to kill themselves, in perfectly tailored, individualized ways.

“Mm.” She doesn’t sound quite so convinced. “All right, but tell the truth, darling. You were happy to jump in. You enjoyed every single blow.”

There’s no denying that, and with Elektra, there’s also no need to bother trying. The loss of Stick gnaws at Matt. His absence is - not for the first time - something raw and ugly and complicated, and his death is another failure to add to an ever-growing list: Could Matt not have broken through to Elektra sooner? Saved her - saved Stick - saved them all from this? 

It hurts when he thinks of Stick. But feeling Stick succumb to his fists hadn't hurt at all.

“It had its moments,” Matt says. Elektra laughs, the sound reverberating in his chest. She's warm in his lap, and he wraps his arms around her waist, holding her tighter to feel her all the better. “I have to tell you -” He clears his throat. “If you had died in front of me again - that would've been it, Elektra. It would have been over for me.”

It hadn’t happened, but he can taste it in his throat all the same. The bitterness of ash.

She shakes her heard. “That’s not true. You may believe it, but I don't. You're too strong.” Elektra shifts in his arms, turning to face him, and touches his cheek. “But if I had watched you die tonight -” Her voice is steel. “Your God would’ve had his hands full.”

Matt doesn’t want to think about what she means, about the blood that would have run in the streets. Nor does he want to truly consider what he himself had meant; if it were all simply different words for the same thing.

He wants to kiss Elektra. And so he does, letting a tide of love, understanding, and fathoms-deep gratefulness pour from his soul. _It didn’t happen._ His hands frame her throat; his lungs welcome her breath. A bad night is behind them. A new day is in their hands.

When they eventually part for air, Elektra drops her forehead to his, and Matt slides his fingers down the column of her neck, thumb hooking on the chain around her neck. The pad of his thumb rolls over the links. They aren’t as delicate as he might expect from a piece of her jewelry, and when he lifts testingly with his finger, it's clear that whatever hangs on the end of the chain isn't particularly delicate, either.

“You don’t need to ask,” Elektra says softly. “Check for yourself.”

Gently, Matt reaches beneath her sweater, fingertips skimming over her soft skin before lifting the chain. The pendant at the end is cool and weighty, latched with a small clasp. There are no engravings. It’s a plain locket, but a custom made one: the receptacle is unusually deep, with a high beveled edge.

With fingers that are suddenly unsteady, Matt fumbles open the clasp. He knows what's inside before he touches it: the smell is both familiar and lost, something of a ghost itself. His throat tightens viciously. Elektra chooses to wear his suit around her neck, embodied in a single scrap of battered leather. Like a talisman, like a touchstone, like something she never wants to forget.

Matt can't speak. He presses his face into the curve of her neck, sheltered by the curtain of her hair, and - so many months after she died in his arms - breathes in a miracle he’d never dared dream of.

::

Sometime later, when the sun has risen enough to warm Matt’s face, and the first signs of the morning rush can be heard on the streets below, Elektra says, “Darling, I’m curious as to what you think we should do about our little problem downstairs. I assume you’ve lost your taste for explosives?”

Matt snorts. “That’s definitely one way of putting it.”

“Good,” she says crisply. “I much prefer you in one piece.”

“Seems like overkill, anyway.” Idly, Matt clasps Elektra's hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “I don’t think our problem is the building, just someone in it. A long-term resident, most likely…. Their room will be one of the quiet ones. Where you’ve never heard any trouble.” 

“Now do go on,” Elektra says, poking lightly at his chest. “Don't be shy. Tell me the part you think will sound stupid if you say it out loud.”

Slowly, Matt says, “All right. What if someone had the ability to get inside our minds? And the Stick we saw was some - some kind of illusion created from what they found in there?” 

Elektra's fingers clench in his. “Oh, then someone would have to be very, very stupid indeed,” she says softly. “To look inside _our_ heads and think that it was a good idea to play around with us. Or perhaps -” She laughs. “Perhaps they're simply dying to find out how badly I can make them hurt.”

He and Elektra had certainly been toyed with. Matt can’t stop thinking about the way his senses had been suffocated. How could simply walking into a building have an effect like that? But if someone who had never experienced Matt's world had been inside his head, trying to force him to live _their_ reality -

Some things, thank God, had gone unscathed. Matt's awareness of other people was perhaps too honed, or too fundamental, to truly be stifled. Particularly certain people: Matt brings Elektra's hand up to his lips and kisses it, smiling against her knuckles as her fingers finally begin to relax.

“What do you say, Matthew? Time to begin knocking on some doors?”

An involuntary chill crawls down his spine at the very thought of going back inside those walls. Maybe they’ve been out of mental range, up here on the roof - maybe the architecture of the building itself _does_ play some role in amplifying their antagonist’s powers - maybe he and Elektra are on the wrong track entirely. To his gut, it doesn’t matter. The thought of stepping back into that deadened world is a nightmare. 

_So get up and do it._

Matt takes a breath. 

Wait, he tells himself.

Think.

“We’re so… connected,” he says to Elektra. “All our history, it’s just, it’s just fodder for someone like that.” Easy pickings, he doesn’t say. That’s what the two of them are. “A person like that, assuming they really do exist - they need so much coming at them that they can't focus. It's got to be coming from every direction. They've gotta be completely overstimulated.”

Like when Matt hears too much, smells too much, tastes too much, _feels_ too much. Exactly like that.

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

He takes a deep breath. “Maybe we don’t do this alone. Maybe we bring in some friends.”

He’s not expecting Elektra to love the notion, but there’s real delight in her voice when she exclaims, “What a fabulous idea! I assume you mean those charming people I met a few months ago?”

Matt laughs. “You just want to see the looks on their faces when they realize I want them to work with you.”

“Darling.” Elektra kisses his cheek. “You know me so well.”

::

“ _Goddamnit_ ,” Jessica Jones says, wrenching open her apartment door. “Murdock, I’m not even going to ask you what you’re thinking, because I know that’s something you actively choose not to do. You survived your little penthouse rendezvous, I take it?”

“Hello, Jessica,” Matt says. For all her prickliness, he can tell she’s glad to see him alive and in one piece. He’s just as glad to hear her voice. “We did, but there are still some… unresolved issues. Can we come in? Talk to you about it?”

“No.”

Matt smiles. “Five minutes?”

“ _No_ , Murdock.”

Turning towards Elektra, Matt says, _sotto voice_ , “You know, we went about this all wrong. We should’ve gone to Danny first, and let him come to tell Jessica all about it. He would’ve loved it.”

“We still can.” She places her hand on his arm. “Shall I call for a car?”

“Listen, _lovebirds_ ,” Jessica says. “Cut the cute little game. I’m gonna let you in, but only because you,” she points at Matt, and he wonders, fleetingly, if she remembers he can sense the gesture, or if she’s merely forgotten he can’t see it, “have the self-preservation skills of a moth around her.” Her finger tracks over to Elektra. “Turns out I like you better alive, God help me.”

Elektra inhales softly. Matt thinks it's a sign of approval. 

“Now you -” Jessica sighs heavily, still pointing at Elektra. “No murdering anyone in my apartment today, you got that?”

“Your request is noted,” Elektra says. Matt can hear a smile gilding the edge of her voice. It must be visible to some degree on her lips, because when Jessica sighs again, it’s different, gustier, and he’s reasonably sure she’s rolling her eyes.

“No murdering,” Matt promises. “No grievous bodily harm, even.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Jessica says, before finally letting them in.

The door to Alias Investigations slams behind them, glass rattling in the frame. Matt smiles. It feels like he’s taking the next step in a journey he’s meant to be on, one that began the day he tailed Jessica Jones, and she turned the tables and tailed him right back. When Jessica says, “You can sit or whatever, I guess,” Matt can’t help smiling a little harder.

He shifts a stack newspapers out of the most stable of Jessica’s rickety chairs and offers it to Elektra, then takes up a position behind her, making the most of it by brushing his fingers against her neck as he grips the back of her chair. Imagining what Jessica will say to all of this, what Luke will say when he hears, and what Danny Rand will try to do is like taking a small, private trip into the future; Matt lingers for a moment, enjoying it, and enjoying the sweet, anchored simplicity of his connection with Elektra.

Now there's a journey he never wants to come to an end.

“Jessica,” he says, and waits while she she mutters, _Jesus, finally_. “What do you know about ghosts?”

::

**Author's Note:**

> Always flailing about mattelektra (and soon to be losing my mind over DD s3) at [tumblr](http://significantowl.tumblr.com)!


End file.
